


A Meta on Space Seed in Star Trek

by Cerridwen



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: A Taste of Armageddon, Equality, Gen, Human Rights, Racism, Space Seed, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 21:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerridwen/pseuds/Cerridwen
Summary: Khan has been cast as the greatest of the Star Trek villains. But while he might to an extent fill the role of villain in Wrath of Khan (though he caused far less damage and pain then Nero did under similar circumstances) I don’t think it’s fair to put that label on him in the original episode of Space Seed; antagonist certainly but not villain.





	A Meta on Space Seed in Star Trek

**Author's Note:**

> All images © CBS Studios Inc.

Khan has been cast as the greatest of the Star Trek villains. But while he might to an extent fill the role of villain in Wrath of Khan (though he caused far less damage and pain then Nero did under similar circumstances) I don’t think it’s fair to put that label on him in the original episode of Space Seed; antagonist certainly but not villain. A villain would be someone like Parmen from Plato’s Stepchildren; a slaver, rapist and a torturer who did it for power over McCoy and well, let’s be honest, he did it because he could. Another example would be Harcourt Fenton Mudd, human trafficker, drug dealer and pimp.

But Khan? While Khan undeniably did bad things and he was ambitious he was not driven by the pursuit of power alone or for pleasure or profit. I also think that to a certain extent Khan’s actions were driven by Kirk’s. So let’s take a look at Space Seed.

We first meet Khan when the Enterprise comes across the Botany Bay on Stardate 2267 (the Stardate is according to the Memory Alpha wiki site). Right from the beginning Spock tells us that all records are fragmentary due to the fact that the period of the Botany Bay’s origin was during Earth’s Third World War. This means that any knowledge that Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise have regarding the Botany Bay is incomplete at best, unreliable at worst which is something to be kept in mind as we go on.

It is the Enterprise’s boarding party turning on the lights that triggers the ship’s programming to wake Khan. This creates a rather interesting series of events. On the one hand they were the ones who triggered the malfunction of Khan’s cryotube and endangered his life in the first place. On the other if the Enterprise hadn’t found the Botany Bay then most likely Khan and his entire crew would have died anyway as their cryotubes failed just like the other twelve had. In addition Kirk did break open Khan’s tube at Marla’s urging when he started to go into cardiac arrest. This plus the medical attention he received did contribute to his continued existence although Bones would later deny that Khan’s survival was the result of anything he did. “ _No. I’m good, but not that good. There’s something inside this man that refuses to accept death_.”

Still these two beneficial actions do offset the detrimental action of boarding Khan’s vessel and activating the power without checking to see if anything would happen to the crew first. While the first is sheer happenstance and the second necessitated by Kirk’s actions those actions did result in Khan’s life being saved so under these conditions it could be said that Kirk did save Khan’s life.

It is while Khan is unconscious in the Enterprise’s medbay that Spock tells Kirk that the odds of the Botany Bay’s crew even making it to another star system was ten thousand to one. From that we can draw the conclusion that the odds of that star system being inhabitable were even greater and thus decreasing the crew’s chances of survival even more. When debating the purpose of their flight Spock does reject Kirk’s theory that the Botany Bay was a penal ship although he doesn’t entirely reject Kirk’s query that Spock suspects danger in them. Spock’s response “Insufficient facts always invites danger” could be an oblique way of saying yes. This sets the stage for the first confrontation between Kirk and Khan.

In the medbay while Khan was still unconscious Kirk learns about Khan’s genetics from McCoy. His response is interesting. “ _An improved breed of human. That’s what the Eugenics War was all about._ ” Please note Kirk’s choice of words here. “An improved breed of human”: not an improved human but an improved breed. This is where the first hint of racism comes in. Because while it’s not directly stated there is still the sundering into “us and “them”, the impression that Khan and those like him are different but not necessarily in a safe way. McCoy’s response to Kirk’s statement, “ _I’d estimate he could lift us both with one arm. It will be interesting to see if his brain matches his body_ ” reveals two things to us. One is that Khan could present a very real threat to them physically speaking and perhaps mentally as well. Second is the way McCoy speaks about him (although this may be because he is a doctor) with a distinct tone of clinical admiration but again showing the separation, the sundering as it were between normal humans and augmented humans. The overall message in this short dialogue is that Khan has been deemed potentially dangerous and (or perhaps because) he’s different.

This is further compounded by the fact that as soon as Khan wakes up and hears English being spoken he grabs a weapon and threatens McCoy. The question is why? Why would English of all languages prompt this response? All we are shown is that Khan felt he had need of a weapon but that McCoy’s calm demonstration of courage gets Khan to release him and surrender that weapon. So here we learn three things about Khan. That people speaking English present enough of a threat to him that upon hearing it the first thing Khan does is look for a weapon to defend himself. We learn that he admires bravery and we learn that he has a code of honour, namely that he will not kill without reason. We know this last one because he released McCoy without harming him, even though he could have taken him prisoner, a not uncommon occurrence in the Star Trek Universe in regards to the crew of the Enterprise.

The following dialogue between Kirk and Khan reveals several interesting things about both men. The first is that Khan does come across as both arrogant and evasive. While he doesn’t outright lie or refuse to answer Kirk’s questions he does evade them, by demanding answers of his own and then by claiming fatigue. This is not the best tactic to use with Kirk as the evasion will make him suspicious and the arrogance will get his back right up.

But then Khan had reasons to evade Kirk’s question, first since as Spock states earlier, “ _Whole populations were being bombed out of existence_ ,” and there were more efficient ways of dealing with those judged criminals then exile. Second, judging by McCoy’s reaction to Khan’s physiology not only has he never encountered someone with a genetic makeup close to Khan’s there’s also no record of any such people existing within the present day Federation.  We also need to keep in mind that there were no children found on the Botany Bay. As Benedict Cumberbatch put it best in his plea for the Syrian Refugees “You have to understand that no one puts children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” This is very true but you also don’t leave those children behind and take the only life boat for yourself if there are any children still alive to be left behind. Put these facts together and the “Logical conclusion” as Spock would say is that Khan and his crew are the last of their race. 

This puts a whole new light on Khan’s demand that Kirk revive his people. First of all, twelve of them have died in those cryotubes already and this was a loss that Khan felt painfully

His demand (although phrased undiplomatically) was entirely reasonable. If Kirk’s crew had been trapped in a mechanical devise (say a shuttle craft for example) and the failure of some of the life support functions of that vessel had resulted in the deaths of twelve of his own crew he’d probably be demanding that the Captain of the vessel that had rescued him get his remaining crew members out and if that Captain had refused to do so until they got to a non-Starfleet base, Kirk would probably be very wary and looking for ways to rescue his crew too.

This brings us to Kirk’s refusal to revive them. Why? What reason did he have to do so? At this point they knew practically nothing about Khan beyond the fact that he was “an improved breed of human”.  More over Kirk had earlier stated in his ship’s log that “ _attempts to revive other sleepers await our success or failure with the casualty already beamed over_.” Since Khan’s awakening was successful what reason could Kirk have for not waking up the rest of Khan’s crew, especially since keeping them in cyrostasis kept them in harm’s way due to cryotube failure? Yes, he did have his engineering and medical personnel do an examination of the vessel but once that examination of a three hundred year old antique was complete he left no one on that vessel to monitor the wellbeing of Khan’s crew as we’ll see later and that examination revealed the failure of those twelve cryotubes.

There is only one reason that I can see for Kirk refusing Khan’s demand to revive his crew and that is that he knew Khan was an augmented human. However at that point he didn’t know anything else about Khan or his crew. Moreover since the records of that time were fragmentary according to Spock then how could Kirk know or even claim that all augmented humans rebelled and attacked normal humans and as such presented a threat to his ship. To put it quite bluntly for Kirk or anyone else to claim that all augments were responsible for the Eugenics Wars would be the equivalent of saying that all Muslims are responsible for the crimes of Deash (ISIS). In short Kirk kept Khan’s crew imprisoned in cyrostasis solely on the basis of their race. This is the first act of racism in this episode and it continues as we go on.

However he does give Khan access to his ship’s technical manuals, something he tells Spock is just simple common courtesy. It is clear that he didn’t consider that Khan would find anything dangerous in them, a drastic oversight as it would later turn out.

However in the very next scene Spock tells Kirk that “ _a group of these young supermen did seize power simultaneously in over forty nations._ ” Please note the wording, a **group** of them, not all of them but a group of them. Now if any other character, Kirk, Bones, Uhura had said that we could brush this off as generalization. But _not_ Spock. Spock is the character who prides himself (if you’ll excuse the expression) on his precision and his accuracy especially in regards to his facts. He is the character who quotes the odds of occurrences down to the decimal point. If Spock says something then we take it that what he says is precisely what he means, no more, no less. This means that there is at least grounds for reasonable doubt to assume that all of the augmented humans of the 20 th century did rebel and attack normal humanity.

It is during this conversation that Spock accessed records apparently kept classified from the full public, namely that 80 – 90 augmented humans escaped Earth. Kirk describes them as being arrogant and aggressive and likens them to Alexander and Napoleon, but not in any complimentary sense of the terms. Spock states that the scientists who created the augmented humans made one mistake. “ _They forgot that superior ability breeds superior ambition_.” This is the most famous line regarding augmented humans in Star Trek canon and it is the biggest and most illogical piece of codswallop that has ever come out of Spock’s mouth, not to mention the most racist.

First of all, it can hardly be denied that Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise crew have superior ability. They are the best of the best of Starfleet, legends in their own time. But if we were to follow Mr. Spock’s “logic” then they must be planning to conquer the Federation and establish their own dictatorship (please note the sarcasm here) because their superior ability must mean that they have superior ambition. However I believe that Mr. Spock was only attributing this superior ambition to augmented humans since he certainly never describe any other highly skilled human as having such a dangerous level of ambition, certainly not his own Captain and crew. Indeed nowhere in Star Trek canon has that phrase about ambition ever been applied to any other race or species by any character within Star Trek canon. It is only ever applied to augmented humans, usually but not always by normal humans.

And that’s where the racism comes in because the moment anyone goes around claiming that another group of people, not their own of course are genetically inclined towards an undesirable trait then yes, they are being racist.

Then we come to the dinner party, which is interesting on a number of levels. First, it’s fairly obvious that Spock was trying to goad Khan here. But goad him into what? Some might say into revealing the truth about himself but others might argue that Spock had already made up his mind about him based on his genetics and on what the history books and records had left. However it is interesting to note that based on what little Spock has told Kirk, all of those surviving records appear to have been written by normal humans. It is highly unlikely that had any records written by augmented humans survived that they would have described their reign in uncomplimentary terms yet not once does Spock mention any complimentary or contradictory reports nor does he ever seem to question the impartiality or truthfulness of the records that do survive. There is a quote by Michael Wood, a historian for the BBC History Magazine “ _Beware those who write history … as the winners_.” (Wood 21)  Moreover when he asks Khan how he kept records of the Botany Bay from the history books he seems to be completely forgetting what he told Kirk when the Enterprise first found the Botany Bay, namely that all records from that time are fragmentary and incomplete.

Another thing that interests me here is that Khan doesn’t lie. He could have made up some story or other. Granted he probably didn’t know just how much Kirk and Spock knew about him. In the short time he had since he had been woken up his attention had been focused on the Enterprise’s technical manuals not history texts. But while he evaded he did not directly lie. On the whole it seems as if lying is beneath Khan which is why he tells Kirk “ _It has been said that social occasions are only warfare concealed. Many prefer it more honest; more open_.”

What I want to draw attention to here is the expression on Khan’s face when Kirk verbally attacks him.

This is where Ricardo Montalbán’s genius as an actor shines through. He lets so much be said in just one look. This is of course only my opinion, but there such pain and disappointment in that one look that I think Khan was truly hoping that mankind had evolved past the point of condemning the losers of a war without giving them a fair hearing to their side of the story. But neither Kirk nor Spock gave any impression of being willing to do this. It does not seem that normal humanity would be willing to grant augmented humanity any place in this new Federation they were in.

This brings me to the one of only two lies Khan ever told: “ _I have never been afraid_.” Yet after the dinner we see Khan pacing in his quarters before Marla arrives.

That looks like fear to me, fear of what will happen not only to him but to his people.           

Then Marla comes in and Khan unquestioningly continues his seduction of her in order to manipulate her into doing what he wants.

But there are two things that are of interest to me here. The first ties back to the fear and worry on Khan’s face, quickly wiped away once Marla came in. As I mentioned earlier, Khan and his crew are the last of their race and Kirk and Spock had just confirmed his worse fears that his crew would be condemned without trial and mostly likely either imprisoned for life or executed just as the augments that fell to the normal humans were 270 years ago. Keep in mind what Spock told Kirk after Khan had first been moved to medbay. “ _It was 10,000 to one against their making it to another star system_.” And those were the odds of just making it to another system. Like I said, the odds against that the star system would be inhabitable were even greater. If Khan and his crew would take those kinds of odds over staying on Earth it gives you a pretty good idea of what their odds were if they had stayed. I’ve argued elsewhere ([ **link**](http://khantoelessar.tumblr.com/post/112361953355/the-augments-and-human-rights)) about what were the probable conditions of the creation of the augment race. Put these facts together and Khan had no reason to suspect any mercy or compassion or justice from Starfleet and far too many reasons to fear them. One of the oldest tenants of strategic warfare, going all the way back to Sun Tzu is “It’s dangerous to press a desperate foe too hard.” Now I doubt that either Kirk or Spock realized that they were doing this because in their time the kinds of atrocities that Khan and his people faced were mostly inconceivable and belonged solely to a barbaric past. But whether they meant to or not it is clear that Khan felt that he was backed into a corner.           

The second thing that interests me is his treatment of Marla. While his manipulation and seduction of her is unquestionable what draws my attention is the line ” _Go. Or stay. But do it because it is what you wish to do. Well?_ ” Now there are two ways we can look at this. One is that this is just part of his manipulation strategy. Making it be her choice in order to bring her further in. Demanding that she ask to stay bears weight to this side as does his demand that she help him take over the ship. (However if one is going to condemn Khan for seducing a woman in order to manipulate her then one had better be prepared to throw the book at Kirk for that, preferably the one he wrote on the subject. See TOS Conscious of the King, Who Mourns for Adonis and Catspaw to name just a few.)           

Yet on the other side of the scale is the fact that it was important to Khan that the choice be Marla’s and Marla’s alone. He would not force or threaten her nor take from her against her will. This stands in contrast to what he said earlier to her in her quarters, “ _Such men dare to take what they want_.” as well as standing in stark contrast to other male antagonists in the original Star Trek such as the male Thrall in Gamesters of Triskelion who at the very least assaulted Uhura or Parmen from Plato’s Stepchildren who used psionic abilities to enslave and torture Kirk and Spock and tried to make them rape Uhura and Chapel.

In this Khan shows himself to be a measure above many of the antagonists or villains that the Enterprise faced. For while he was manipulative as the circumstances demanded we see that Marla’s choice was vitally important to him. Once again we are shown his code of honour. 

It must also be pointed out that this is where Khan makes his first declaration as to his intentions; that he’s going to take over the ship and “remold” this time to his liking.  Again there are two ways we can look at this. The first is that Kirk and Spock were right in their condemnation of the augment race and that Khan presented a real threat right from the beginning. This would be the “once a conqueror, always a conqueror” stance.

But on the other side it must be pointed out that Khan did not make any move or even voice any ill will towards the Enterprise even though Kirk had kept his crew in harm’s way by keeping them in those cryotubes until after Kirk and Spock made it clear that there was no place for augmented humans in the Federation and that the grudges from 300 years ago would still be carried forward. Khan could have struck much sooner. He could have staged this scene in Marla’s quarters before the dinner. This goes back to what I said earlier about it being dangerous to press a desperate foe too hard.

While this is happening Kirk and some of his command crew are having a meeting. Spock has learned of Khan’s past. The conversation here is revealing on a number of levels. The first is the differences between Scotty, Bones and Kirk’s attitudes and Spock’s attitude. Spock on the one side totally condemns Khan as a ruthless tyrant and a dictator whose actions nothing can excuse. (But I must point out that he will take a quite a different stance in Bread and Circuses when dealing with a modern Roman Empire that has institutionalized slavery).

On the other side there is a “sneaking admiration” as Scotty put it for Khan. They do acknowledge that he never attacked first and that there were no massacres under his reign. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Scotty did not say that there were no massacres _by Khan_ under his rule but that there were no massacres _period_. This means that contrary to Spock’s claim that there was no freedom under Khan’s rule there must have been at least one and that is freedom of religion. We know this because of the territory that Khan ruled over. “From Asia throughout the Middle East” is what Spock states. That territory includes countries such as India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine. Throughout history these countries have been among the most troubled when it comes to the issue of religion, going back literally thousands of years. Yet Scotty said that there were no massacres at all. This means that not only did Khan manage to rule over this area without massacring large groups of people but he also managed to get these diverse groups to live together without killing each other. I have absolutely no idea how he managed to do that but I’m very certain that there are a great number of governments in the real world today who would pay a **_LOT_** to learn how.

The second thing I want to draw your attention to is that Kirk and the others “are against him but admire him all at the same time.” But the reason they are against him is because of what the history books wrote about him. This goes back to that quote by Michael Wood I gave earlier “Beware those who write history … as the winners.” In addition there is what Spock said earlier about the records from that time being fragmented. Put these two facts together and we find that Kirk, Spock and the others condemned Khan based on nothing more than fragmented reports, written centuries ago by the winner’s side of a war.           

What is important to note here is not only has Kirk refused to release Khan’s crew from cyrostasis for no other reason than their genetics but he then confines Khan to his quarters for no other reason then what those reports told of Khan’s actions 300 years ago. But at no point do we see Kirk, Spock or any of the others acknowledge the crimes and atrocities that normal humanity wrecked upon augment humanity.

These crimes and atrocities would include forcing children to submit to genetic experimentation, creating a race of sentient beings probably for the sole purpose of making them slaves and living weapons and then committing genocide in their turn because Khan and his crew are the last of their race. I wish to give a comparison to show the injustice of this. Let’s say that three important figures from Canadian and American history were brought forward into our own modern times, Sir John A MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister and considered to be one of our founding fathers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. All three men are by and large considered to be great men even icons in their own countries.

Yet John A. MacDonald first as Canada’s Superintendent General of Indian Affairs and then as Canada’s Prime Minister was responsible for the development of the residential school system from 1880 to 1950 ([ **link June 2017**](http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools/)) which was deemed in 2015 by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to be an act of cultural genocide ([ **link June 2017**](https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/chief-justice-says-canada-attempted-cultural-genocide-on-aboriginals/article24688854/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&)).

In passing the Electoral Franchise Act of 1885 MacDonald and the Canadian government excluded “persons of Mongolian and Chinese race” because they had “no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations” and instituted a head tax of $50.00 for any immigrate of Chinese origin. ([ **link June 2017**](http://www.revparl.ca/english/issue.asp?param=181&art=1241)). See also here for a ([ **link June 2017**](http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/021017/f1/nlc011348-v6.jpg)) to Macdonald’s exact words.

Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves (although the slaves that were specifically Washington’s were to be given manumission upon his death) ([ **link June 2017)**](http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/ten-facts-about-washington-slavery/) ([ **link June 2017**](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/?preview=_page%2525253d6&page=1)) and in 1779 in retaliation for the Cherry Valley Massacre, Washington ordered the Sullivan expedition a scorched earth campaign which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages and their stores of winter crops. ([ **link** **June 2017**](http://www.historynet.com/massacre-retribution-the-1779-80-sullivan-expedition.htm)) While the research I’ve done does not say how many were killed in the initial attack the death toll from exposure and starvation of those who survived was estimated to be in the thousands.

By modern day laws these are considered to be crimes. Yet if these men were to be brought almost over 200 years into the future would they be charged with these crimes? Indeed, after so much time had passed could they even be charged? My point here is that not only would they not be charged many would not even consider doing so because ultimately in the end Macdonald, Washington and Jefferson were the victors of their wars and colonialization.

That was the true crime that Khan and his crew were condemned for. They lost a war 270 years ago. Nor are there any accounts in canon of Khan or indeed any augmented human actually being _tried_ for their crimes. Given that WWIII broke out immediately after the Eugenics War and given the fact that the augment race was wiped out right down to the smallest child there is not much ground to assume that even the bare farce of a trial was granted to any augmented human.

What all this is leading up to is what has been termed as “Victor’s Justice”. This is where “An entity participates in carrying out ‘justice’ on its own basis of applying different rules to judge what is right or wrong for their own forces and for those of the (former) enemy. Advocates generally charge that the differences in rules amounts to hypocrisy and leads to injustice.” This term was first coined by Richard Minear in his 1971 account of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

This is very much what guided Kirk’s actions at the end of that meeting when he had Khan imprisoned in his quarters under guard. At that point Khan had taken no action against Kirk or the Enterprise. True, he had told Marla that he was going to take over the ship but that was after the dinner party where Kirk and Spock made it clear to Khan that only the winner’s interpretation of history would be considered true. But beyond his evasiveness Khan had not given Kirk any reason to judge him a threat. He had not acted against Kirk in anyway. By confining him to his quarters without cause or reason given, an argument can be made that Kirk struck first.            

This gives us another lens through which to view the confrontation between Kirk and Khan that followed.

When we see Khan again we are shown a troubled man. This is the second time we, the audience see that, contrary to what he told Kirk at the dinner party, he does feel worry and fear.

Then Kirk comes in. He does not knock or ask permission which he would have done if Khan was still a guest. He then immediately confronts Khan with his identity and challenges him as to his purpose and intentions. Khan’s response is intriguing. He states they wanted a new life and a chance to build a world; build, not conquer. When Kirk challenges Khan’s claim that Kirk wouldn’t understand because he’s not “a product of controlled genetics” Khan’s response is the only statement or act of racism that we ever see from him. He calls Kirk inferior both mentally and physically and says he’s surprised at how little humans have evolved.

While these words are undeniably racist in their utterance it should be kept in mind everything that Kirk had done first from refusing to release Khan’s crew to making it clear at the that there would be not true justice or acceptance for his people in the Federation to imprisoning him in his quarters without cause or given reason.

Kirk is not entirely without blame here.

I also want to draw your attention to when Khan says “ _how little man himself has changed_.” This can simply mean biologically but then we need to factor in Khan’s likely upbringing at the hands of the normal human scientists and the fact that he and his crew are the last of their race. Whenever normal humans have held power over augmented humans they have either probably subjected them to slavery and forced experimentation when they were children, killing them when they were deemed inferior and then in the wars after the fall of his empire the normal humans slaughtered every augmented human they could find right down to the smallest child. (There must have been children. How many people actually believe that the scientists of the Eugenics program really created a race of sterile mules incapable of reproduction? The augmented humans ruled for at least 4 years as fully grown adults there had to have been some children born to them.)

And here once again was a normal human in a position of power over him seeming to condemn him and his crew for what they were and for what all augments had done to normal humanity but with no acknowledgement of what normal humanity had done to Khan’s people. It is no wonder that there is such weary bitterness in Khan’s voice when he says “ _how little man has changed_.” This is only my personal opinion but when he said that I don’t think he was talking about just physical evolution.

The remainder of his statement that he and his people will do well in this century when taken with what he said earlier about normal humanity’s inferiority would seem to be an implication that Khan intended to conquer. Certainly that’s the way Kirk took it and what Khan did afterwards supports that.

But again, playing the devil’s advocate here I have to wonder if Khan would have done so if Kirk had not first judged and condemned him from the winner’s point of view. As I’ve pointed out earlier Khan made no move whatsoever against Kirk or his ship until after Kirk imprisoned him without trial despite what he said to Marla about taking over the Enterprise. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if instead Kirk had held to the values of the Federation and extended a hand to Khan as an equal? If he had acknowledged that normal humanity as a race had committed atrocities against augmented humanity, atrocities that still have gone unanswered for? In his way, Khan had always been a builder not a destroyer, which given his probably upbringing was remarkable. Would Khan have tried to conquer if there had been a place for him and his crew in the Federation, especially once he learned that there were other races that could match his in intelligence and strength? Well, I suppose that would be an alternate timeline argument because that door closed with the dinner party. From that point onward the die was cast and the road locked around the feet of the crews of both ships.

It is with Marla’s help that Khan beams over to the Botany Bay. This seems to be the only time that he actually does need Marla’s help and I have to wonder just how necessary she was because Khan was able to escape his room, over power his guard, beam over to his ship, wake his crew and then take over the Enterprise without Kirk or any member of his crew outside of Engineering becoming aware of it until it was too late. First of all this means Khan was able to do all this despite Kirk being aware of Khan’s identity and knowing what he is capable of and despite the fact that the red shirts are supposed to be security, trained to combat and handle prisoners of many races, not just human. Second, Khan was an engineer. If he was good enough to figure out how to take over the ship just from reading the tech manuals for one day then how hard would it have been to jury rig a device to control the transporter by remote?

But help Khan Marla did. It should be noted here that even in overpowering his guard and the crew member in the transporter bay, Khan did not kill. He was certainly capable of it and given that these were Red Shirts the odds are that if they had been facing any other enemy of the Enterprise other than Khan they would have been killed. Once again we see not only Khan’s code of honour in not killing without need but also his restraint. There was no tactical or strategic need not to kill them. Indeed by doing so he would have demonstrated his ruthlessness to Kirk right from the start. He would have shown Kirk just what the consequences would have been if he didn’t do what Khan wanted. But he stayed his hand even when it was tactically advisable not to.

Now we get to meet Khan crew.

The family dynamic aside (Khan has no problem bringing his crew their clothes, so much for arrogance) what he says to them is important. “ _The battle begins again. Only this time it’s not a world we win. It’s a universe._ ” So here we have proof that Khan did intend to conquer, that his intentions were not peaceful. While I don’t justify or exonerate either his intentions or his later actions I can see why he would do this. Kirk and Spock had proven to him that humanity hadn’t changed at all in the past centuries, that they were still a threat to his people and that if his people were to survive in this new Federation then they would have to carve a place for themselves by force. Up to this point Kirk had given Khan no reason not to take what he needed, not to conquer in order to build. Normal humanity, who once again held him and his loved ones in their power hadn’t changed, why should he?

Does this make what Khan does next right? No. It is understandable and I can see why Khan viewed it as necessary but it wasn’t right. Because what he does next is take over the ship and threaten to kill Kirk and his bridge crew. There are several things that I want to draw your attention to. The first is the degree of tactical intelligence Khan showed here. As Spock said, “ _Brilliant. Every contingency anticipated_.” Khan had for all intents and purposes won. He had control of both the bridge and engineering and obviously had incapacitated the rest of the entire ship’s crew as they could not intervene in any way. He didn’t need Kirk to surrender the bridge. Yet he tells Kirk that he is willing to negotiate. Why? He had already won.

The second thing I want to point out is that it is only after Khan escaped from his quarters that he had physical access to the ship. Granted he now had his crew but this just demonstrates how much of an upper hand he had. They had managed to take over the entire ship in minutes. Kirk’s surrender wasn’t necessary and yet he spares them, even after threatening their lives. Why?

In the next scene we seem to get an answer. Khan is attempting to recruit the bridge crew at gun point. He says he needs their training to operate a ship this complex. But does he? First of all, if he could figure out how to take over the ship from just reading the tech manuals in less than a day then what could his crew do with more time? Second, while he might need a bridge crew he doesn’t need specifically the Alpha bridge crew. The Beta and Delta shifts could have served equally well. But he does claim need the rest of the crew of the Enterprise. 73 people (74 counting Marla) aren’t enough to run a ship the size of the Enterprise. It’s not even enough for one shift. Khan it would seem needed to get control of the crew. (Although I should point out that he was able to pilot the Reliant, a Miranda-Class Starship in combat conditions with a crew of only 20 augmented humans which presents a counter argument for this). If he had just executed the command crew … well military opinion (in my limited knowledge) is divided on this point. Some hold to the “kill the officers and it makes the foot soldiers leaderless and malleable. Others hold to the theory of control the leaders and you control the body. Judging from what little we know of the Eugenics War many of the other augmented human tyrants held to the idea of kill the leaders and as many of the people as you need to in order to make the others cower. Khan as both the history written by the normal human victors and by what we are shown in this episode preferred to kill as little as possible. But that doesn’t mean that Khan isn’t capable of being ruthless when he thinks he has to be as we are shown here.

Because in this scene we are shown that Khan is willing to torture Kirk to death if that’s what it takes. He doesn’t want to. As he tells them “ _If anyone of you joins me, anyone! I’ll let him live. It’s so useless!_ ” It’s clear he doesn’t want to kill or torture. Doesn’t want to but he still does.

The other thing that caught my attention in this scene was Khan saying “ _I need you and yours to select a colony planet. One with a population willing to be led by us_.” To which McCoy replies, “ _To be conquered by you. A starship would make that most simple, wouldn’t it_?” Given what Khan told Joaquin on the Botany Bay it would seem that McCoy is right and Khan is lying. If so, it is the second lie that Khan ever told throughout the entire episode, the first being when he said he had never known fear (although I’m not sure that first one qualifies as a lie because Khan obviously believed it). Which is interesting because if he was going to lie why didn’t he do it earlier?

As I pointed out he could have lied earlier during the dinner party, it would have made far better sense to do it then when there was a greater chance he would be believed. There was very little chance that the crew would believe him when they were being forced to watch Khan torture their Captain to death.

Which brings me to my next point and that is the great mystery of the Botany Bay. What was their true purpose in their flight from Earth? To put it down to mere survival presents us and thus Khan and his crew with one rather sticky problem. 73 or even 85 people are not enough to ensure the survival of a race. Augmented or not they would inbreed themselves into extinction sooner or later. In order to survive and thrive Khan and his crew needed to find a race that they were biologically compatible with. Which weighs in for what Khan said to McCoy about wanting to find a colony planet with a population willing to be led by them. Because while Khan was a conqueror, as we saw with Marla he was never a rapist. In this matter at the very least the free choice of his partner was essential.

 This puts even greater odds against their survival since the Botany Bay left Earth pre first contact when the very existence of other races in the universe was regulated to science fiction. This makes the odds against their survival even greater. They had no way of knowing that there was even a chance that any such races even existed. This means that leaving Earth was practically as much as death sentence as staying. Yet they still left even when they could have won if they’d been willing to commit genocide. This as far as I can see leaves us with two options for why all of them chose to option of the Botany Bay. The first is that there was another reason beyond mere survival that prompted their departure. If there was we are never even given so much as a hint as to what that might be. The second is that for all of Khan’s arrogance and ambition he still valued human life so greatly that he and by extension very single member of his crew chose a virtual suicide mission rather than destroy humanity.

The truth I believe lies somewhere in between. Khan can be called a lot of things but he’s neither stupid nor pointlessly suicidal. If he was going to die then he would go down fighting as we see in Wrath of Khan (even in his insanity he didn’t just give up and go quietly into that good night). But neither did he consider of turning the Genesis device onto other planets as Nero did with the Black Hole device in the Star Trek reboot.

That is the good side of Khan. But he is still a warrior and yes he had been a conqueror and (to quote a line from another Gene Roddenbery creation, Andromeda) ” _There are no saints on the battlements._ ” Khan is definitely not a saint because after Marla leaves (with Khan expressing his disappointment that she wasn’t stronger) he tells Joaquin “ _The Captain is dead. Take Mr. Spock next_.” He makes it clear he was going to continue until they either were all dead or they broke and joined him.

It is in the next scene that Marla shows her strength and really comes into her own. Because as we see here it is not Kirk who really beat Khan, it is Marla. She manages to outwit Kirk’s guard by injecting him with a hypo that she must have first stolen from medbay. Then she frees Kirk and in doing so she saves his life as she quite bluntly reminds him, demanding that he spare Khan’s life in repayment. But in doing so she shows not only her true strength but also her courage and her integrity. She knew perfectly well what the consequences to her would be if Kirk retook the ship. She’d be court martialled and given that Khan was still considered an enemy of Earth and thus by extension the Federation the charges would most likely include high treason as well as mutiny. Yet she doesn’t ask for immunity for herself only for Khan’s life. It is also interesting to note that she doesn’t make excuses or justifications for what she has done. She simply did what she thought to be right and did her best to correct her mistake when she saw she had made one and accepted the consequences for them. This is what I mean by her courage and her integrity.

Things proceed at a very fast pace here and I’m just going to skim over the re-taking of the ship. This is in part because the lack of combat skill and abilities on the part of Khan and his people strain my suspension of disbelief. Long story short, for a group of warriors that could take over a quarter of the earth in a matter of years and a starship in minutes they did not exactly make a good showing of themselves. Plus there’s the fact that Khan had the strength to crush a phaser with his bare hands but not only didn’t crush Kirk’s wrist to a pulp …

… he did no damage to Kirk what so ever. Enough said and moving onto the hearing.This is where Kirk takes the moral high ground for the first time in this episode. First there is what he said in his Captain’s Log, _“Khan and his people. What a waste to put them into a reorientation centre. And what do I do about McGivers_?” This echoes back to what Scotty said earlier about having a sneaking admiration for Khan and Kirk saying that they could admire him but be against him at the same time. He saw, I think that there was not only greatness in Khan and his people but also goodness. He saw that they had the potential to be so much more than they had been on Earth and so he gave them a chance.

What he did, releasing them with a planet of their own instead of imprisoning them for life was both merciful and compassionate but it was not just. In order for it to be true justice he would have had to not only hold his own people accountable for what was done to Khan’s race 270 years ago but also acknowledge the effects his actions played on what Khan chose to do. This goes back to what I said earlier about Victor’s justice. Here I want to quote the words of Radhabinod Pal, one of the Jurors in the Tokyo IMT trial that tried the Japanese war criminals after WWII.  His was a dissenting vote, not because he denied that these crimes had taken place (indeed he condemned the Japanese war-time conduct as “devilish and fiendish”.)  ([ **link June 2017**](http://www.fampeople.com/cat-radhabinod-pal_2)) but because he felt that the Allies were first of all being hypocritical because they were equally guilty of many of the same charges (such as dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and second were charging the Japanese defendants of crimes that were not criminalized at the time they were committed (such as crimes against humanity) and third that the prosecution had failed to prove its case in many instances. In his dissenting judgement he states “a victor can dispense to the vanquished everything from mercy to vindictiveness; but the one thing the victor cannot give the vanquished is justice.” (Crowe 241)

Kirk was a merciful and compassionate man in his treatment of Khan and in giving Marla a choice in either going with Khan or facing court martial he showed himself to be an honourable one. For by doing so he repaid the life debt he owed to her. Yes there is a great deal to be said for the fact that Marla had helped Khan lead the mutiny in the first place. But whether you call it mercy or honour he still gave her that choice.

Which leads me back to Khan and what he said when Marla made her choice. He calls her a superior woman. And in that one sentence he destroyed any argument that has ever been made for Khan being a racist including the scene in his quarters where he claims that Kirk is inferior during their confrontation. For Marla was a normal human, a member of the race that the other augmented human dictators had deemed inferior, fit only to serve, to enslave. But Khan calls her superior, not because of her genetics but because of her character, her strength and her courage. Genetics had nothing to do with whether or not Khan deemed someone superior or inferior. Nor for that matter did his crew. Khan married Marla, a normal human and as far as we know not one single member of his crew had a problem with that or with her. And why would they? Bear in mind that every single member of his crew freely chose to follow Khan into the black, knowing full well what the odds of their survival were. They chose this rather than commit the genocide of the normal human race. Whatever claims that can be made against Khan by his detractors, the claim of racism at the very least fails here.

In this he does take the high ground over Kirk and the others of the crew of the Enterprise. For all the mercy and compassion that Kirk showed to Khan and his crew if we measure the actions of Kirk and Khan against what they said, Kirk does not exactly come out on the moral high ground when it comes to the racism stakes.

Let’s start with Kirk. After finding the Botany Bay he takes Khan back to his medbay for treatment when Khan’s cryotube start to fail. He states in his Captain’s Log that the revival of the rest of Khan’s crew depends on how successful their treatment of Khan is. However once that treatment proves successful he does not revive any of Khan’s crew but rather leaves them in cyrostasis even though he knew that twelve of those cryotubes had failed, killing the people inside them. He did this for no other reason than because of their race, because they were augments (although to be fair Khan’s evading of his questions would have made Kirk suspicious), but at that point he didn’t know who Khan was, only what he was.

He does grant Khan access to the ship’s technical manuals, calling it a decency to help him catch up but his later actions during the dinner and later in imprisoning Khan in his quarters show a judgement of Khan based not only on the winner’s side of the war but also on the basis of Khan’s race. For the Eugenics War was a race war especially towards the end. For all the admiration that Kirk, Bones and Scotty expressed towards Khan they still judged him dangerous not only because of what he did but also because of what he was. In confronting Khan in his quarters it is Kirk, not Khan who first brings up genetics as a means of judging whether a person is deemed superior or inferior. It is only at the end that Kirk redeems himself in regards to this by releasing them onto Ceti Alpha V because putting them into a reorientation centre would be an attempt to reprogram them to be other then what they were.

Khan on the other hand makes no move against Kirk whatsoever until after that dinner party in which Kirk and Spock make it clear that the old prejudices against his people are still there. It is only after Kirk imprisons him in his quarters without trial or without Khan having taken any action against Kirk up to that point that Khan attacks. He attempts to win the crew over to his side despite their genetics (although his methods were definitely morally questionable) and then at the end Khan takes a normal human for his wife.

I’m not denying the bad things that Khan did but on this issue at least he took far more egalitarian actions in regards to race then Kirk did. It was what you did or could do that mattered most to Khan. Kirk on the other hand did judge Khan and his crew first by their race from the outset and even in the meeting where Bones and Scotty are pointing out that there were no massacres under his reign and no wars unless he was attacked first it is Kirk who calls them “ _Supermen, in a sense. Stronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring_.” When Spock chides them for “romanticizing” a ruthless dictator Kirk puts it down to the streak of barbarism that exists in all humans, meaning that it’s the barbarian part that admires Khan not the civilized part.

Even at the end when Kirk released them on Ceti Alpha V he does so more because of their race then for who they are. He deems them remarkable not because of who they are but because of what they are.

In comparing Kirk and Khan I want to bring in the next episode that aired “A Taste of Armageddon”. I won’t go over the whole episode as it is the very ending that is of relevance here. In order to protect his ship and his crew Kirk issued Starfleet general order 24, the order to destroy Eminiar Seven and all its inhabitants, which according to its leader Aman amounted to hundreds of millions of people. And Scotty was going to do it. “ _All cities and installations on Eminiar Seven have been located, identified and fed into our fire-control system. In one hour and forty-five minutes, the entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed_.”

  1. The legal definition of genocide (which is the same one found on the Star Trek Memory Alpha Wiki site) is “ _a deliberate, systematic destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. It is characterized by actions against said group which are intended to destroy the group by causing the deaths of its members, in whole or in part, such as:_
  2. _Killing them outright_
  3. _Deliberately forcing them to live under conditions calculated to cause them to die, for example depriving them of food, imposing forced labour on them designed to kill them by exhaustion._
  4. _Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, for example forced sterilization._



([ **link June 2017**](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Genocide))

Genocide; in order to first of all protect his crew and second to force Eminiar Seven to make peace with their enemies Kirk threatened an entire planet with genocide. And he wasn’t bluffing. Even after Kirk has rescued his own people and could have left Eminiar Seven to their war he still told Scotty to carry out general order 24 if he didn’t hear from Kirk in an hour.

Genocide was the one crime that not even the worst of the Augments detractors could ever make against Khan and his followers. They couldn’t even accuse him of threatening to commit genocide in order to make his enemies back down because genocide was anathema to them. Captain Kirk cannot say the same.

At the end of that episode Kirk does make quite a passionate speech about how humans may be savage by instinct but how we can also choose not to kill today. And it was very good speech and being afraid of the consequences of all-out war the Eminans did choose peace. Of course if they hadn’t Kirk would have killed them all himself and they knew it.

I’m sure Kirk did mean what he said in his speech up to a point. It still doesn’t change the fact that once you cut away all the glitter, all the frills and all the fine words what it basically boils down to is Kirk saying “Do what I tell you to or I will nuke your planet. Do what I tell you to or I will massacre your entire race right down to the smallest child.”

Moreover, as I pointed out earlier, Kirk meant the words that he told Aman only up to a certain point. For what he told Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise at the very end of the episode would seem to contradict that speech. When Spock points out that Kirk took a big risk Kirk replies that since the Emenians have been killing 3 million people for 500 years and one physical attack wouldn’t have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks but it would have ended their ability to make war. This is very close to what US President Harry Truman said after dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

“We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” ([ **link June 2017**](https://trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-08-06&documentid=59&pagenumber=1))

  The only real difference between what Truman did and what Kirk did is that Eminiar Seven surrendered immediately and Japan held out for two cities.

This brings me back to Khan and Kirk. For all Khan’s ambition and his self-proclaimed desire to build an empire, for all his ruthlessness in torturing Kirk, we are shown here that Kirk is by far the more ruthless and remorseless killer, the one capable of far greater atrocities. For forced between either committing genocide to ensure their own survival and over ten thousand to one odds of even making it to the next star system Khan and his crew chose almost certain death. Kirk when faced with the threat of the destruction of his crew chose the threat of genocide to protect them and then continued the threat to make Eminiar Seven and Vindikar accept peace on the Federation’s terms. For me this is where Kirk loses his moral high ground.

These two episodes stand in stark contrast to each other. The one showing Kirk’s mercy, the other his ruthlessness. In Space Seed, for all the wrongness of Khan’s actions; he only did them when he believed there were no other options open to him and there was a line he would not cross no matter the cost to himself or even his own people and that line was genocide. Kirk on the other hand showed mercy when he could afford to but on Eminiar Seven, even when he had the luxury of options, when his crew was safe and he could have left Eminiar Seven and Vendikar to their war he choose to step across the line that Khan wouldn’t. Yes the claim could be made that he did it for noble reason, to restore peace. But is that truly all that different from Khan’s claim that they had given the world “order”. After all, peace enforced at the point of a gun, especially by an outside party is not freedom, no matter how good the intentions are of the person wielding that weapon. You also have to keep that threat up otherwise that peace won’t last. Hence the need for the Starfleet port that Fox wanted to set up.

For all Kirk’s good intentions, and they were good, he still forced the people of Eminiar Seven to do what he said through threats of violence and then left a Starfleet presence behind him to maintain that threat (albeit in subtext).

This is why I said at the beginning of this Meta that I didn’t think it was fair to put the label of villain on Khan in Space Seed, antagonist yes, villain no. He was and remained throughout all incarnations an incredibly complex and complicated character who always defies such simple labels or attempts at categorizing. This is I think one of the reasons that he’s always held up as Kirk’s rival and equal, though not his opposite. They are far too much alike to be opposites. 

* * *

Works Cited

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“All Great Neptune’s Ocean”. Andromeda. Global Television Network. 15 Jan. 2001. Television.

Crowe, David M _War Crimes, Genocide, and Justice_. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. Print.

Fine, Sean. “Chief Justice says Canada attempted ‘cultural genocide’ on aboriginals”. _Globe and Mail_. 28 May 2015. Web 6 June 2017.

KhantoElessar. _The Augments and Human Rights_. Tumblr. 28 Feb 2015. Web. 6 June 2017.

Macdonald, John A. “Royal House of Commons Debates”. _Collections Canada_. 1471-1477. Web 6 June 2017.

 _Memory-Alpha.wiki_. Web. 6 June 2017.

Miller, J.R. “Residential Schools”.  _Historica Canada._ Rev. ed. 9 Sept. 2016.  The Canadian Encyclopedia _._ 10 Oct. 2012. Web 6 June 2017.

“Radhabinod Pal : biography”. _Fampeople.com_. n.d. Web. 6 June 2017.

Soodalter, Ron. “Massacre & Retribution: The 1779-80 Sullivan Expedition”.  _Historynet.com_. n.p. 7 Aug. 2011. Web. 6 June 2017.

“Ten Facts About Washington & Slavery”. _George Washington’s Mount Vernon_. Mount Vernon. n.d. Web. 6 June 2017.

Truman, Harry S. “Press release by the White House, August 6, 1945”. Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. Web. 6 June 2017.

Wiencek, Henry. “The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson: A new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder” _Smithsonian.com_. Smithsonian Magazine. Oct. 2012. Web. 6 June 2017.

Wood, Michael. “Michael Wood on … Rethinking the past” BBC History Magazine Jan. 2015 21 Print

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr at: http://khantoelessar.tumblr.com/


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